Gaza besieged as Israel and Hamas launch attacks

Tit-for-tat Israeli strikes and Hamas rocket attacks continued today after Monday's suicide bombing in southern Israel - the first such attack inside the country for more than a year.

In the latest assault by Hamas, a rocket fired from Gaza hit a kibbutz four miles from the Israeli border, wounding two sisters aged two and 12 as they played outside their home, Israeli medics said. The rocket was one of more than two dozen fired by Hamas in retaliation for an Israeli airstrike last night that killed seven Hamas policemen.

The injury of the two girls raised the prospect of harsher reprisals, with the Israeli authorities vowing to keep hitting Hamas.

"We need to understand there is a war in the south," the vice premier, Haim Ramon, told Israel Radio. "The war against Hamas has to be fought on all fronts."

In Gaza, MPs of the Hamas-dominated parliament cancelled today's session, fearing an Israeli attack after the chairman of the Knesset's security and foreign affairs committee, Tzachi Hanegbi, hinted that Israel should target Hamas' political leaders.

Overnight, Hamas rocket fire slightly wounded a 14-year-old girl and knocked out power in parts of the rocket-scarred Israeli town of Sderot.

Ramon, meanwhile, said Israel would continue to use its "economic weapon" against Gaza. Israel cut off virtually all shipments into Gaza three weeks ago after Hamas barraged Israel with rockets following an Israeli operation that killed 19 Gazans, most of them militants.

Hamas took responsibility for a suicide bombing on Monday in the southern Israeli town of Dimona.

The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas condemned the militants' rocket fire, but urged Israel to let supplies into Gaza. "These rockets that are being fired at Israel must stop. It's pointless," he said at a news conference with the Austrian foreign minister, Ursula Plassnik.

"At the same time, Israel should not use these rockets as a pretext for collective punishment on Palestinians in Gaza. Israel must always allow humanitarian supplies and other needs to be provided to Gaza." The Israeli economic blockade of Gaza has been compounded by Egypt's sealing of its border with the territory since Hamas's June takeover.

Late last month, militants tore down sections of Gaza's border with Egypt, enabling hundreds of thousands of Gazans to break out and buy supplies in an Egyptian border town. After 12 days of chaos, Egyptian forces sealed the breaks on Sunday.

But Israeli security chiefs said that Palestinian militants may have used the Gaza-Egypt border breach to slip out of Gaza, and then infiltrate Israel through the porous Egyptian-Israeli border.

The warning prompted a top-level meeting today between the prime minister, defence minister and foreign minister when they approved the construction of a £138m border fence with Egypt.

The fence was originally proposed years ago, but was never built because of the cost.